BIOS: Technology Means Business

The SPV M600 is a solid upgrade to Orange’s SPV M500. Designed to meet all your wireless aspirations at the speed your busy live requires, it features a good combination of communication and entertainment needs for the modern business person. It’s not as good overall as Orange’s SPV M3100, but it certainly shouldn’t be dismissed if you need more PDA functionality than a regular smartphone provides.

The SPV M600 (108x58x18mm, 148g) is a quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE smartphone. It also offers Wi-Fi capabilities with dual support (802.11b and 802.11g), Bluetooth compatibility and runs Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. The latter, of course, includes standard packages such as Pocket Outlook, Phone, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger and a couple of games. Throw in the fact that businesses can synch this device to their Microsoft servers for true push e-mail and Orange, and corporates should be more than happy.

The black-and-chrome device (from £30 to £100 with contract) operates on four different GSM frequencies (850-/900-/1800-/1900MHz), meaning unrivalled coverage world-wide with roaming capability in over 120 countries. The addition of GSM850MHz means more widespread coverage in North America. With a reasonable 128MB RAM (compared to 64MB on the SPV M500) and 64MB ROM, MMC/SDIO slot and 2-Megapixel digital camera, the SPV M600 is just a capable at home as it is a work. The bright and crisp 2.8-inch QVGA (320x240 pixels) colour screen makes browsing images and video files an enjoyable experience. It also doubles as a viewfinder for the camera.

Sporting comfortably snappy overall performance despite its modest 200MHz processor, the SPV M600 does well at common productivity tasks, including the full set of its pre-installed applications. It’s a bit limited in the memory department however, which means its SDIO capable SD/MMC (unlike the SPV M3100 which uses MicroSD) expansion slot should come in handy for all but the most basic of users. The 1200mAh Lithium-ion Polymer should be capable of powering the device for around 2 days with average use.

The SPV M600 uses Microsoft’s latest Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. The major changes and additions in Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 include one-handed navigation, program compatibility with smartphone devices, persistent storage and new memory configuration, ActiveSync 4.0 (already on version 4.2), as well as the new addition of Direct3D Mobile, DirectX Mobile, and DirectDraw Mobile support. A nice touch is that Adobe’s Acrobat (PDF) files are also supported out of the box.

The inclusion of a 2.0-Megapixel camera lets you capture your favourite still and moving images, and there’s even a digital zoom and rotating macro lens selector for snapping detailed photos of objects under 20cm from the lens. The integrated Windows Media Player 10 Mobile music player lets you play your favourite music, in the most popular format.

With the SPV M600, you have a relatively complete mobile office in your pocket. You can access your e-mails with attachments on the go, make a last minute comment on the new draft or crop some photos from a business meeting the day before. The only real downsides are that it lacks 3G support, there’s no pop-out keyboard (essential for long messages and note taking), and the lack of a side-mounted scroll wheel makes operating the device tricky single handed.

Thankfully the navigational pad and soft buttons are excellent, and there’s also dedicated ‘Windows’ and ‘OK’ keys. Other buttons are few and far between; there’s one for the combined radio/vibrating alert/synchronisation Comm Manager, and one to manage the Camera. There’s also a volume trigger on the side of the device, as well as a power button, mini-USB port, and a standard 2.5mm headphone jack (the SPV M3100 uses a proprietary jack).

Thanks to Bluetooth wireless technology, data transmission is quick and easy. Meanwhile, And what’s more, with Bluetooth wireless printing, sending images or documents to a compatible printer is child’s play. Bluetooth v2.0 boasts a communication speeds up to three times faster then previous Bluetooth releases (up to 10 times in certain cases). It also has lower power consumption through reduced duty cycle, and simplification of multi-link scenarios due to more available bandwidth.

MIDP 2.0 is a revised version of the MIDP 1.0 specification, and includes new features such as an enhanced user interface, multimedia and game functionality, greater connectivity, over-the-air (OTA) provisioning, and end-to-end security. MIDP 2.0 is backward compatible with MIDP 1.0. The Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is a key element of the Java 2 Platform, Mobile Edition (J2ME). When combined with the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), MIDP provides a standard Java runtime environment for today’s most popular mobile information devices, such as cell phones and mainstream personal digital assistants (PDAs).

CLDC and MIDP provide the core application functionality required by mobile applications, in the form of a standardised Java runtime environment and a rich set of Java APIs. Developers using MIDP can write applications once, then deploy them quickly to a wide variety of mobile information devices. MIDP has been widely adopted as the platform of choice for mobile applications. It is deployed globally on millions of phones and PDAs, and is supported by leading integrated development environments (IDEs). Companies around the world have already taken advantage of MIDP to write a broad range of consumer and enterprise mobile applications.

If you’re tired of lugging around a bag full of gizmos, the Orange SPV M600 maybe the device for you. It’s a phone, PDA (huge range of third-party applications available), camera, digital music player and an e-mail device, all wrapped up in a single and relatively robust (it does scratch easily, however) package. Call quality is good, and the speakerphone works well to. For heavy e-mail, SMS and note takers however, you should definitely take a look at Orange’s SPV M3100 - unless you don’t mind pulling out the stylus quite a lot. [7.5]

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